Takaki Chapter 8 Reading Journal

The beginning of chapter eight of Takaki talks about the Chinese immigration to the United States.  I found this to be surprising because I had never really read about the history of their immigration, and why they came here.  They initially came to join the “49ers” in the search for gold in California.  Many people came from China and stayed for several years to bring money back to their families in China.  There was a story described that a man came to the U.S. for a few years, and when he returned to China, was wealthy and bought land equivalent to four city blocks and built a palace for his family.  I thought that this story explained the surge in Chinese immigration.  When people see how only after a few years the riches that America has to offer, everyone wanted an opportunity to work and to become wealthy.  Then there was a change in the work that the immigrants were doing.  There was a demand for the Chinese immigrants to work on the railroads and they worked by the thousands.  However, they were not paid on an equal basis as the white railroad workers were.  Eventually the workers grew tired of the unfair treatment, and demanded higher wages and a shorter working day.  Although the company was willing to slightly increase wages, they refused to meet the demands of the workers and threatened to bring in blacks to complete the workforce.  The situation was resolved after the company cut off food supply to the striking workers and they quickly gave in to the people in charge.  I thought it was interesting that they threatened to replace the Chinese with Black workers because of how the two groups are perceived in society.  The Chinese were once welcomed, but later when the population grew; they became discriminated against and received poor treatment from others.  The Chinese still had a better quality of life than the blacks at this time because the Chinese were still able to live freely.  They could at least fight for fair wages and work hours, where the blacks still didn’t have much say.  This part of the chapter intrigued me because I had never really learned about the influence and immigration that the Chinese had on early America.